11. Constance to Lady Mount-Temple, 1 April 1886. BR 57/22/21.
12. When Constance refers to ‘Hejlsberg College’ in her letters, it is in fact clear that she is referring to the English Neuenheim College, since she notes that one of the staff attended Clifton College in Bristol, as Otho had done.
13. Constance to Otho, 19 July 1896. MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
14. Constance to Robbie Ross, 21 June 1896. Clark Library.
15. Adela Schuster to More Adey, 23 June 1896. Clark Library.
16. In a letter to Otho dated 17 Jan 1898 (MSS collection of Merlin Holland) Constance wrote: ‘I am glad that Cyril goes away tomorrow as I am afraid that if he stayed here he might be got hold of. Apparently the Ranee had a letter sent her from Posilippo asking if I lived here or something and she wrote a formal answer saying that I did not. She did not tell me till long afterwards and I have never seen the letter and don’t know who sent it.’
17. Clark Library.
18. Clark Library.
19. Oscar to the Home Secretary, 2 July 1896. Complete Letters, p. 656.
20. Complete Letters, p. 675
21. Complete Letters, p. 784.
22. Complete Letters, p. 829.
Chapter 15: Life is a terrible thing
1. Complete Letters, p. 906.
2. Constance to Vyvyan, 21 June 1897. BL Eccles 81727.
3. Notes made in Otho’s notebook. MSS collection of John Holland.
4. Constance to Vyvyan, 27 Sept 1896. BL Eccles 81727.
5. Constance to Vyvyan, 23 Feb 1897. BL Eccles 81727.
6. Ibid.
7. Constance to Vyvyan, undated. BL Eccles 81727.
8. Constance to Vyvyan, 27 May 1897. BL Eccles 81727.
9. Complete Letters, p. 865
10. Complete Letters, p. 912.
11. Constance to Otho, 5 Aug 1897. MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
12. Constance to Otho, 7 Oct 1897. MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
13. Constance to Blacker, 25 Sept 1897. BL Eccles 81727.
14. Constance to Blacker, 26 Sept 1897. BL Eccles 81727.
15. Ibid.
16. Constance to Blacker, 30 Sept 1897. BL Eccles 81728.
17. Complete Letters, p. 954.
18. Constance to Blacker, 1 Oct 1897. BL Eccles 81727.
19. Constance to Otho, 17 Jan 1898. MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
20. Constance to Arthur Humphreys, 24 Oct 1897. Clark Library.
21. Constance to Otho, 19 Feb 1898. MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
22. Constance to Otho, 17 Jan 1898. MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
23. Constance to Blacker, 4 Feb 1898. BL Eccles 81727.
24. Constance to Blacker, 10 March 1898. BL Eccles 81727.
25. Ironically, unbeknown to Constance, Oscar had already written De Profundis, a confessional letter to Bosie in which he admitted he had grown bored with married life.
26. Constance to Blacker, 18 March 1898. BL Eccles 81727.
27. BL Eccles 81728. Leonard Smithers was a publisher and bookseller who published Oscar’s work, including The Ballad of Reading Gaol.
28. Constance to Lady Mount-Temple, 27 Sept 1893. BR 57/50/9.
29. Vyvyan Wilde, Son of Oscar Wilde, p. 130.
30. Otho quoting Constance’s telegram in his letter to Lady Mount- Temple, 9 April 1898. BR 57/23/1.
31. Otho to Lady Mount-Temple, 9 April 1898. BR 57/23/1.
32. This account from Laura Hope to Lady Mount-Temple, based on Otho’s explanation to her.
33. Otho to Lady Mount-Temple, 9 April 1898. BR 57/23/1.
34. Otho to Lady Mount-Temple, 29 May 1898. BR 57/23/6.
35. Complete Letters, p. 1055
36. Complete Letters, p. 1055
37. Reynolds’s Newspaper (17 April 1898).
38. Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper (17 April 1898).
39. Laura Hope to Juliet Deschamps, 14 April 1898. BR 57/23/5.
40. Jane Simon to Lady Mount-Temple, 16 April 1898. BR 57/23/4.
41. Jane Simon to Lady Mount-Temple, 13 April 1898. BR 57/23/3.
42. Douglas, Oscar Wilde: A Summing Up, p. 99.
43. Otho to Lady Mount-Temple, 29 May 1898. BR 57/23/3.
44. Oscar to Robbie Ross, c. 1 March 1899. Complete Letters, p. 1128.
Epilogue
1. Juliet Deschamps to Oscar, 10 October 1898. Clark Library.
Select Bibliography
Manuscript Collections
The largest collection of Constance’s autograph letters is of those between her and Lady Mount-Temple, held as part of the Broadlands Archive in the University of Southampton. Over a hundred letters from Constance to her brother Otho are in the private collection of Merlin Holland. The Library of William Andrews Clark Jr at the University of California in Los Angeles has some letters from Constance, while the British Library, as part of its Eccles collection, holds a significant number, not least those between Constance and the Blackers and from Constance to Vyvyan, all written during her period in exile on the Continent. The Morgan Library and Museum holds the MS of ‘The Selfish Giant’, written by Constance. Important original correspondence relating to Constance’s flight from England and her time in exile is held in the private collection of John Holland.
Published Sources
Amor, Anne Clark, Mrs Oscar Wilde: A Woman of Some Importance (Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1983)
Beddington, Mrs Claude, All That I Have Met (Cassell & Co., London, 1929)
Bentley, Joyce, The Importance of Being Constance (Robert Hale, London, 1983)
Borras, Maria Luisa, Arthur Cravan: une strategic du scandale (Editions Jean-Michel Place, Paris, 1996)
Braddon, Mary, The Rose of Life (Hutchinson, London, 1905)
Brémont, Anna, Comtesse de, Oscar Wilde and His Mother (Everett & Co., London, 1911)
Byrne, Patrick, The Wildes of Merrion Square (Staples Press, London, 1953)
Cherry, Deborah, Beyond the Frame: Feminism and Visual Culture, Britain, 1850–1900 (Routledge, London, 2000)
Corkran, Henriette, Celebrities and I (Hutchinson, London, 1902)
Douglas, Lord Alfred, Oscar Wilde and Myself (John Long, London 1914 )
——, Autobiography (Seeker, London, 1929)
——, Without Apology (Martin Seeker, London, 1938)
——, Oscar Wilde: A Summing Up (Icon Books, London, 1962)
Ellmann, Richard, Oscar Wilde (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1988)
Field, Michael [Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper], Works and Days: From the Journal of Michael Field (John Murray, London, 1933)
Fryer, Jonathan, Robbie Ross: Oscar Wilde’s Devoted Friend (Carroll & Graf, New York, 2000)
Gere, Charlotte, with Lesley Hoskins, The House Beautiful: Oscar Wilde and
the Aesthetic Interior (Lund Humphries in association with the Geffrye Museum, London, 2000)
Gide, Andre, Oscar Wilde: in memoriam (souvenirs) (Mercure de France, Paris, 1925) Gilbert, R. A., The Golden Dawn Companion (Aquarian Press, Wellingborough, 1986)
Gregory, James, ‘And May I Say Nothing’, The Oscholars, vol. Ill, no. 12, issue 31; www.oscholars.com
Harris, Frank, Oscar Wilde (Constable & Co., London, 1938)
Holland, Merlin, The Wilde Album (Fourth Estate, London, 1997)
——, Irish Peacock and Scarlet Marquess: The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde (Fourth Estate, London, 2003)
——, and Rupert Hart-Davis (eds), The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde (Fourth Estate, London, 2000)
——, The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Collins, London, 2003)
Holland, Vyvyan, Son of Oscar Wilde (Rupert Hart-Davis, London, 1954)
——, Time Remembered after Père LaChaise (Gollancz, London, 1966)
Hope-Nicholson Jacqueline (ed.), Life amongst the Troubridges: Journals of a Young Victorian, by Laura Troubridge, 1873–1884 (Tite Street Press, London, 1999)
Howe, Ellic, The Magicians of the Golden Dawn: A Documentary History of a Magi
cal Order 1887–1923 (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1972)
Hyde, H. Montgomery, The Trials of Oscar Wilde (Hodge, Edinburgh, 1948)
——, Oscar Wilde: The Aftermath (Methuen, London, 1963)
——, Oscar Wilde: A Biography (Eyre Methuen, London, 1976)
Ingleby, Leonard Cresswell, Oscar Wilde (T. Werner Laurie, London, 1907)
Jopling, Louise, Twenty Years of My Life, 1867 to 1887 (John Lane, London, 1925)
Kingston, Angela, Oscar Wilde as a Character in Victorian Fiction (Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2007)
Lancaster, Marie-Jaqueline (ed.), Letters of Engagement: The Love Letters of Adrian Hope and Laura Troubridge (Tite Street Press, London, 2000)
Langtry, Lillie, The Days I Knew (Hutchinson, London, 1925)
Le Gallienne, Richard, The Romantic ’gos (Putnam & Co., London, 1951)
Leverson, Ada, Letters to the Sphinx from Oscar Wilde: With Reminiscences of the Author (Duckworth, London, 1930)
Lowndes, Marie Belloc, Diaries and Letters, 1911–1947 (Chatto & Windus, London, 1971)
McKenna, Neil, The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde (Arrow Books, London, 2004)
Melville, Joy, Mother of Oscar: The Life of Jane Francesca Wilde (John Murray, London, 1994)
Newnham-Davis, Lieut.-Col., Dinners and Diners (Grant Richards, London, 1899)
Newton, Stella Mary, Health, Art & Reason: Dress Reformers of the 19th Century (John Murray, London, 1974)
Owen, Alex, The Place of Enchantment: British Occultism and the Culture of the Modern (Chicago University Press, Chicago, 2004)
Page, Norman, An Oscar Wilde Chronology (Macmillan, London, 1991)
Pearson, Hesketh, The Life of Oscar Wilde (Methuen, London, 1946)
Queensberry, Marquess of, Oscar Wilde and the Black Douglas (Hutchinson & Co., London, 1949)
Raffalovich, Andre, L’Affaire Oscar Wilde (A. Stork, Lyon, 1895)
——, Uranisme et unisexualité (Lyon, 1896)
Robb, Graham, Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century (Picador, London, 2003)
Ruskin, John, Mornings in Florence (George Allen, London, 1875)
Schroeder, Horst, Additions and Corrections to Richard Ellman’s ‘Oscar Wilde’ (privately printed, Braunschweig, 2002)
Shaw, George Bernard, The Diaries, 1885–1897, vols 1 and 2, ed. Stanley Weintraub (Pennsylvania State University Press, Philadelphia, 1986)
Sherard, Robert Harborough, The Life of Oscar Wilde (Werner Laurie, London, 1906)
Terry, Ellen, Memoirs (Gollancz, London, 1933)
Tollemache, Baron, Some Reminiscences of the Early Life of Georgina, Lady Mount Temple, by Her Surviving Brother (Helmingham, 1890)
Tweedie, Mrs Alec, Hyde Park: Its History and Romance (Eveleigh Nash, London, 1908)
Vyver, Bertha, Memoirs of Maria Corelli (Alston Rivers, London, 1930)
Wilde, Constance, The Bairn’s Annual (Leadenhall Press, London, 1887)
——, There Was Once: Grandma’s Stories (Ernest Nister, London, 1888)
——, A Long Time Ago (Ernest Nister, London, 1892)
——, A Dandy Chair (Ernest Nister, London, 1893)
——, Cosy Corner (Ernest Nister, London, 1895)
——, Favourite Nursery Stories (Ernest Nister, London, n. d.)
Wilde, Oscar, The Complete Works (HarperCollins, London, 2003)
Yeats, W. B., Autobiographies: Reveries over Childhood and Youth and the Trembling of the Veil (Macmillan & Co., London, 1926)
Illustration Acknowledgements
The William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles: 6 below /Judy, or the London Serio-Comic Journal December, 1886; 7 above left (Acc:BX-2N.2.16b); 12 above left/Great Expectations! cartoon by Phil May, 1895; 12 below/New York Standard 1895; 14 above (Acc:BX-3N.II).
Getty Images: 6 above; 7 below.
John Holland Collection: 2 above left and above right; 11 above right.
Merlin Holland Picture Archive: 1; 2 below left and below right; 3; 4 above left and above right; 5 below; 7 above right; 8; 9; 10; 11 above left; 13; 14 below left and below right; 15 above left and below; 16.
TopFoto: 4 below/Roger-Viollet; 5 above; 11 below/The Granger Collection; 12 above right; 15 above right.
Index
Aberdeen, Ishbel Maria, Countess of, 154
Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 190, 260
Adey, More, 203, 287, 293–301, 327
‘Aestheticism’: as movement, 3, 6–7, 23–4, 30–2, 37, 52, 56; satirized, 40–1;; and Oscar–Constance wedding, 87; Oscar embodies, 89; and marriage, 90; and dress, 92, 109–10;; in Tite Street house, 99–100;; classical interests, 112; and Constance’s writings, 131
Aguétant, Marie, 79
Ainslie family, 59–61
Ainslie, Douglas, 59–61, 107, 118, 120, 135, 151, 181
Aivazovsky, Ivan, 47–8
Albemarle Club, London, 56, 102, 162, 203, 254–5
Alexander, George, 8, 128, 195, 245–6, 254, 263–4, 327
Alexandra Club, London, 161
Algeria, 9, 253, 256
Alice, Princess of Monaco, 305
Allen, Maud, 327
Althaus, Fred, 180
Anderson, Mary, 66
Ardilaun, Olivia, Lady, 128
Arthur (Wildes’ butler), 1, 12, 239, 243, 246
Arts and Crafts movement, 5
Asquith, Herbert (later 1st Earl), 179
Atkins, Fred, 217, 262
Atkinson, Ellen (‘Ella’), 45
Atkinson, Captain John (Constance’s maternal grandfather), 13, 15
Atkinson, Mary (née Hemphill; Constance’s maternal grandmother), 13, 15, 44–5, 70–1
Avondale Hotel, London, 1, 4, 256
Babbacombe Cliff, Torquay: Constance visits, 10–12, 185–6, 192, 206, 227, 253, 274; Constance rents from Lady Mount-Temple, 213–16;; Oscar joins Constance at, 214–16;; Oscar stays at without Constance, 218–20;; Bosie joins Oscar at, 219–20, 222; Lady Mount-Temple declines request from Constance to visit, 251–2
Bad Homburg, Germany, 204–19
Badley.J. H., 3, 239
Bairn’s Annual, The, 130–1, 133–4
Balcombe, Florence (Mrs Bram Stoker), 39, 79, 128
Balfour, Arthur James (later 1st Earl), 179, 223
Battersea, Cyril Flower, 1st Baron, 223
Bedales School, 3, 238–9, 270
Beddington, Mrs Claude, 135
Belt, Richard, 31–2, 47
Bergson, Mina (later Mathers), 171
Bernard-Beere, Fanny Mary, 87
Berneval-sur-Mer (France), 302
Bernhardt, Sarah, 39–40, 90, 204
Besant, Annie, 165
Betws-y-Coed, Wales, 34
Billing, Noel Pemberton, 327
Blacker, Carlos, 307–14, 319
Blacker, Carrie, 307
Blackwood’s Magazine, 179–80
Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna, 165–7
‘Bloody Sunday’ (1887), 149–50
Böcklin, Arnold, 312
Bogliasco (Italy): Villa Elvira, 308–9, 311
Bonar, Henry, 230
Bonar, Lilias (Constance’s cousin), 218, 230–2, 234, 305
Booth, Edwin, 46
Borderland (magazine), 176
Bossi, Dr (Italian gynaecologist): treats Constance, 285–6, 292, 317; shot dead, 328
Bothnia (ship), 66
Bourget, Paul, 90
Bourke, Algernon, 254
Boxwell, Miss (Constance’s travelling companion), 280
Braddon, Mary, 129; The Rose of Life, 101, 320
Bradley, Katherine, 94–5
Brémont, Anna, Comtesse de, 94, 128, 171–4
Bright, John, 127
Bristol Mercury and Daily Post, 97
Britannia (ship), 69
Brooke, Bertram, 283
Brooke, Margaret, Lady, Ranee of Sarawak: friendship with Constance, 277, 283–4, 302, 309, 312; influence on Haldane, 277; background, 283; in Italy, 283–4, 290
, 302, 305–6;; photography, 284, 306; in Germany with Constance, 291–2;; and Adela Schuster, 294–5;; and Constance’s death, 317–18
Brookfield, Charles, 263
Brougham, Henry Peter, Baron, 17
Browning, Oscar, 118
Browning, Robert, 52
Burne-Jones, Sir Edward, 3, 112, 131, 186, 226, 228, 262, 275, 283, 323
Burne-Jones, Georgiana, Lady (‘Georgie’), 226, 228, 262, 269, 275–6
Burne-Jones, Margaret, 269
Burne-Jones, Philip, 269, 271–2
Burns, John, 149
Cadogan Hotel, London, 266
Café Royal, London, 13
Cairo, 232
Calderon, Philip Hermogenes, 58
Cambridge, Prince George William Frederick Charles, Duke of, 98
Cameron, Henry Herschel Hay, 213, 323
Campbell, Janey Sevilla, 139
Carfax Gallery, 327
Carson, Edward (later Baron), 259
Carte, Richard D’Oyly, 49
Catherine, Sister, 286
Chambers, Haddon: John-o-Dreams, 251
Chante, Mrs Ormiston, 155, 159
Charles Street, Mayfair, 53, 100
Chelsea Hospital for Women, 99
Christian Social Union, 244
Christian socialism, 185, 274–5
Chronicle, The, 307
Churchill, Lord Randolph, 9
Churchill, Sir Winston: sues Bosie, 326
Classics: revival of interest in, 112–13
Clewer (Windsor), 228
Clifton, Arthur, 202, 206, 210, 274, 277, 280, 297–8
Clifton, Marjorie, 210
Cobden, Jane, 154, 158
Cochrane, (later Admiral Sir) Basil and Cornelia (later Lady), 83–4, 192, 304
Colonel, The (play), 40
Cons, Emma, 154, 158
Conway, Alfonso, 262, 267
Cooper, Edith, 94–5
Cooper-Oakley, Isabel, 164, 166
Corelli, Marie, 151–2;; The Silver Domino, 152
Corkran, Alice, 130–1
Corkran, Henriette, 130, 225
Cosy Corner Stories (serial), 138
Crane, Walter, 3, 128
Cravan, Arthur see Lloyd, Fabian
Cromer see Felbrigg Cromer, Evelyn Baring, 1st Earl of, 232
Cunninghame Graham, Miss, 218
Cunninghame Graham, Robert, 107, 149–50, 161
Curzon, George Nathaniel (later Marquess), 108
Dante Alighieri: Inferno, 214, 217
Delgaty Castle, Aberdeenshire, 58–61
de Morgan, Evelyn, 30
Franny Moyle Page 40
